Discursive constructions of teacher in an educational technology journal

Jenny McDonald, Swee-Kin Loke

Abstract

The integration of technology with teaching and learning is a significant area of research in the educational technology field. Teachers play an instrumental role in technology integration and many teacher-related factors have been identified that predict technology use and integration in educational settings. How teachers are represented in the educational technology literature (e.g., as caring, didactic, or lazy) can potentially impact on how technology integration takes place. However, there is little research that specifically explores teacher representations. This paper seeks to address this gap and examines the discursive constructions of teacher in 846 papers from the Australasian Journal of Educational Technology (AJET). Using a corpus-based analysis, the multiple representations of teacher in AJET were investigated. The analyses revealed two mainstream representations of teacher: teachers are people on whom researchers impose obligations; and ‘teacherliness’ is old and negative. This paper concludes with a discussion of the potential impact of such representations on technology integration and suggestions of more useful representations of teachers and their teaching.